What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted he's not in control of military decisions in his own administration, or worse.

Last week, the satellite communication service provided to the Ukrainian military by Starlink was abruptly throttled. The resulting breakdown in communications forced the Ukrainian military to scrap missions.

Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which is largely owned by its CEO, Elon Musk. When asked if he was responsible for the denial of service to Ukraine, Musk shifted the blame to the White House, saying that the particular service Ukraine was using was controlled by the United States government.

Asked about the matter today, however, Trump adamantly insisted he had nothing to do with it. "I wasn’t involved," Trump said. "I don’t know who did it, but I was not involved."

Trump's categorical denial that he knew what was happening with the Starlink shutdown leaves exactly three possibilities, all of them damning.

1. Trump is outright lying. This is the most straightforward explanation, and in some ways the least problematic, but it's also the least likely. Trump is now openly siding with the Putin regime, supporting it both financially and diplomatically in its invasion of Ukraine.
   
   
2. Trump has been cut out of the loop by his own subordinates. According to reporting, crippling the Starlink service to Ukraine was Musk's idea, although Musk also immediately denied responsibility. But Musk, who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the 2024 election and essentially forced himself on to Trump's campaign, has reveled in his control over Trump and Trump's agenda. Furious Trump staffers complained to reporters that Musk was acting as a "co-president" on Trump's return to the White House.
   
   Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also has a history of making decisions about Ukraine without informing Trump—in fact, he's done it more than once. Trump has been unwilling or unable to hold Hegseth accountable.
   
   
3. Trump was kept fully informed about Musk's plan, but couldn't understand it, or has already forgotten about it. Trump is notoriously lax about doing even basic preparation for the national security aspects of the presidency, and his fragile mental and cognitive health has been a concern since his first term. On Monday, for example, he stopped before boarding a helicopter to wave at crowds and salute troops that were not there.
   
   It is entirely possible that Trump signed off on these and any number of other plans without understanding or bothering to take note of what he was ordering.
   
   

Why does this matter?

• Presidents don't just get to shrug and say "it's not my fault" when something goes wrong. 

• Having a monstrously incompetent president in charge is bad; having it be unclear who is exercising the powers of the presidency is worse. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He bragged about war crimes he ordered, again.

This morning, Trump posted photos of a destroyed highway bridge leading into Tehran, threatening to continue to ruin the country's civilian infrastructure "UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT" if Iran's government didn't "MAKE A DEAL." (Trump declared victory in the war and Iran's imminent "unconditional surrender" almost a month ago.) 

 

It is a war crime to destroy civilian infrastructure. It is especially a war crime to hit a civilian target a second time, after rescuers have arrived, in order to drive up casualties—and that is exactly what the United States appears to have done. Trump has ordered these "double-tap" strikes on the boats he claimed were smuggling drugs out of Venezuela. The attack on the girls' school that killed 165 students and teachers was also carried out this way.

Before Trump, these kinds of premeditated attacks on rescuers were more closely associated with the atrocities of the Yugoslav wars or the Putin regime. But Trump seems to equate this kind of thing with his idea of manliness that actual military veterans generally react to with disgust. Trump has even begun to echo his Secretary of Defense's mocking language about bombing Iran "BACK TO THE STONE AGE." 

That phrase was originally coined by Gen. Curtis LeMay in 1965, as American military involvement in Vietnam was ramping up, and characterized the now completely discredited belief that wars could be won simply by bombing a population into submission. (Trump dodged the Vietnam draft with a fake doctor's note.) Vietnam is much smaller in area and population than Iran, or for that matter Afghanistan, whose victorious faction resisted U.S. invasion and bombardment for 18 years.  

News about the bridge destruction comes on the same day as still more reporting confirming that the Trump White House was completely unprepared for even the possibility of Iranian counteroffensives or anything more than "performative" responses.

And yet behind the bluster has been a growing recognition within the West Wing that the situation may be slipping out of its control. Key Trump officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were surprised by the barrage of retaliatory attacks Tehran launched against U.S. and Israeli targets across the region, including in countries long assumed to be off-limits: Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, a state that had both harbored Iran’s terrorist proxies and served as a conduit for backchannel diplomacy between the U.S. and Hamas. The response shattered the assumption that Tehran would confine itself to performative retaliation. In internal deliberations before the war’s launch, Hegseth had pointed to Iran's muted reaction to Trump’s past attacks as evidence that calibrated force could impose costs on Tehran without triggering a broader war. Hegseth “was caught off guard. There’s no question,” says a person familiar with his thinking. 

But there was at least one sign that Trump and Hegseth are starting to realize what an incredible fiasco the Iran campaign has become: they purged several top Army officials, none of whom were involved in the day-to-day conduct of the war. It's not clear exactly why those officials were fired tonight, but Trump and Hegseth's clumsy attempts to demand personal loyalty from professional military personnel have gone over poorly. One of the people fired tonight, Gen. Randy George, had ordered an investigation into a bizarre helicopter fly-by of Trump backer Kid Rock's house that appeared to have been staged for social media. Hegseth immediately ordered the investigation shut down and called the pilots "patriots."

Why does this matter?

• Nobody as incompetent at "warfighting" as Trump or Hegseth should ever be allowed anywhere near military command.

• Only dictators try to purge the military of "disloyal" troops because only dictators need to.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got called out for his ignorance about the basic realities of attacking Iran, by his own staff.

The Trump administration has been at pains to convince Americans that, all evidence to the contrary, Trump was aware of the possibility that Iran could fight back, including by shutting down shipping through the critical strait of Hormuz. Yesterday, spokesperson Karoline Leavitt thundered that the Pentagon had been prepared for that threat for "decades," and that Trump had been fully aware of the risks.

That message is being challenged tonight—by the Trump administration. 

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that sources who were in the room with Trump when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reminded Trump that Iran could and likely would retaliate in a number of ways, including by using sea drones and mines to menace ship traffic in the Persian Gulf. That is, of course, exactly what has happened. Trump, those sources said, simply chose to believe that it wouldn't happen—or that if it did, the military would handle it somehow. 

Trump also appears to have kept the number of people in the loop on his Iran war ambitions to a tiny few—Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. None, including Hegseth, have any relevant military backgrounds. (Both Vance and Hegseth served in the military for a time, but mostly in low-level bureaucratic and public relations capacities.) Keeping himself isolated from people with actual military and strategic expertise appears to have contributed to Trump's miscalculation.

The WSJ story echoes a similar report published yesterday by CNN. 

It's not surprising that these details, which are embarrassing to Trump but paint the rest of his administration as helpless before his incompetence, is seeing print. Trump is notorious for burning through staff who were selected for their absolute loyalty, only to quickly become appalled at what they see from the inside. During his first term, a senior staff member even wrote an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times promising Americans that Trump's worst impulses were being carefully restrained by his staff.

The blame-shifting is also not happening in isolation: Vice-President JD Vance, the one person Trump can't fire, has been distancing himself too. Asked today whether he'd disagreed with Trump in private about the war plans, Vance smirked and avoided the question, saying he couldn't disclose what he'd said in a secure room. (The "secure room" was a curtained-off area in Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, and Vance wasn't there—they spoke while Vance was in an actual SCIF in Washington.)

Trump continues to publicly insist—and may even actually believe—that Iran is helpless and will stop fighting back any moment now. But the situation is looking increasingly like another Vietnam, the war Trump escaped fighting in with the help of a fake doctor's note. Like Vietnam, Iran cannot be bombed into submission, not even if the Trump administration is willing to commit more atrocities against civilian populations. Its population, including its sizeable dissident faction, is rallying behind its entrenched military-backed government against the United States. It was already under crippling economic sanctions, so can't be hurt more by them. It has considerable ability to sway regional politics, both through force and diplomacy. It can cause far more damage to the interests of the United States and aligned countries (for example, by blowing up oil tankers) than it can absorb simply because it has much less to lose. 

There are two respects in which the Vietnam analogy doesn't hold. Iran is roughly a quarter the size of the United States in area and population: much larger than Vietnam or even Afghanistan, which resisted occupation for more than a decade. And unlike Vietnam, Iran could actually build nuclear weapons with the material it already has on hand—something its ruling regime now has far more reason to want as a deterrent. That last fact is why essentially the entire world, even including Iran's traditional ally Russia, undertook a massive diplomatic campaign to bring Iran back from the brink of rogue nation status. (Trump unilaterally sabotaged those agreements in 2018, angry that his predecessor President Obama was getting credit for them.)

Asked today when he thought the war on Iran would be over, something he has given wildly different answers to over the past week, Trump responded that it would end "when I feel it in my bones." 

Why does this matter?

• A president who can't or won't even pretend to have a plan two weeks after he starts a war is a danger to the entire world and especially to Americans. 

• What the Pentagon knows for decades is useless if an incompetent president thinks he knows better.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threw a tantrum because a woman asked him about a promise he'd made five days ago and apparently forgotten.

On December 3, ABC News reporter Selina Wang asked Trump about his plans to release video of the second strike on the defenseless survivors of the Sept. 2 military attack on a boat in the Caribbean.

SELINA WANG, ABC NEWS: Mr. President, you released video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the second video. Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves what happened?

TRUMP: I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem.

This is significant because the video of the second strike is very likely evidence of a war crime. So far it has only been by selected members of Congress, who have called it "deeply disturbing" among other things.

Today, Trump was asked by another ABC News reporter about his promise to "certainly release" the video to the American public. He became angry, lashed out at her, and tried to pass the buck to his subordinate, Pete Hegseth.

RACHEL SCOTT, ABC NEWS: Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegseth now says –

TRUMP: I didn’t say that. That’s – you said that, I didn’t say that. This is ABC fake news. 

SCOTT: You said that you would have 'no problem' releasing the full — okay, well, Secretary Hegseth 

TRUMP: Whatever Hegseth wants to do is okay with me.

SCOTT: He now says it's under review. Are you ordering the secretary to release that full video?

TRUMP: Whatever he decides is okay with me.

Trump then repeated his ludicrous claim that his extrajudicial attacks on these alleged drug-smuggling boats saves tens of thousands of American lives. In the space of two sentences, he claimed that number was 25,000 and 45,000. Afterwards, Scott followed up, prompting Trump to get visibly angry:

SCOTT: Are you committed to releasing the full video? 

TRUMP: Didn't I just tell you that?

SCOTT: You said it was up to Secretary Hegseth—

TRUMP: You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you — you are an obnoxious — a terrible — actually a terrible reporter. And it's always the same thing with you. I told you. Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.

Trump's temper has always been an issue, but it is growing harder and harder for him to control during his second term, particularly around female reporters.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who can't handle "obnoxious" reporters really can't handle the questions they're asking. 

• The rights of the American people to know what their military is being ordered to do are more important than Donald Trump's feelings. 

• Donald Trump, not Pete Hegseth, is President of the United States.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He moved onto yet another explanation for why the illegal Venezuelan boat attack he ordered wasn't his fault.

To the apparent surprise of the White House, the controversy is continuing to mount over unlawful attacks on survivors of an initial missile strike on suspected Venezuelan drug traffickers. News broke last week that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had verbally ordered two survivors of the Sept. 2nd strike to be killed while they clung to wreckage, which is presumptively murder under United States law and a war crime under international law—and according to the Defense Department itself.

Trump was completely absent from the public eye today, even as questions continued to mount about his health, but his spokesperson Karoline Leavitt issued the third official White House stance in as many days on the attack. Backtracking again from Trump's claim yesterday that neither he nor Hegseth had ordered the killing of survivors, Leavitt admitted the existence of a second strike for the first time. But she insisted that the decision was made by the ranking military officer, Adm. Frank Bradley, and that it was legal for him to have done so.

Pressed on that point, given how clear U.S. law and official Department of Defense doctrine is about killing defenseless people whether or not they are enemy combatants, Leavitt said with a straight face that the second missile strike was done in "self-defense."

In other words, with Congressional investigations already getting underway, Trump is now admitting some of the basic facts of the story that his administration had furiously denied, but setting up the military officer who carried out his orders as the one to bear responsibility.

Trump recently called for sedition trials when Democratic members of Congress pointed out that servicemembers have a duty to disobey illegal orders, and has ordered the FBI to "investigate" them.
 

Why does this matter?

• "We will blame you if it helps us politically" is not a great message for a president to send to American military forces.

• Presidents don't need to be military veterans to be effective commanders-in-chief, but they do have to be capable of understanding why honor and integrity is so important to the United States military. 

• One way to avoid this kind of issue is not to give illegal orders to kill defenseless people in the first place.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He backtracked on whether he'd ordered a war crime.

The Washington Post reported last week that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had ordered a second strike to kill survivors of an initial attack on what the Trump administration claims was a Venezuelan drug-smuggling boat. 

Killing helpless survivors of an attack on a ship is never, ever permitted under U.S. or international law. Ordering or taking part in such an attack is either murder or a war crime. This is not a matter of opinion or legal interpretation: the current, governing edition of the Department of Defense's Law of War Manual makes this clear in exactly these terms and demands that officers refuse any such order:

18.3.2.1 Clearly Illegal Orders to Commit Law of War Violations. The
requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.

Trump, for his part, has spent much of the past two weeks furious that six Democratic members of Congress with military and intelligence background posted a video saying as much, at one point calling for their deaths before later denying (or forgetting) that he'd done so.

The problem for the Trump administration is not just that Trump has apparently authorized—or been powerless to stop—the murder of defenseless survivors, but that there are Republicans in Congress who care more about respect for the law of warfare than protecting Trump, and are in a position to join Democrats in launching a real investigation.

That may explain why, after several days of claiming otherwise, Trump and his officials are now saying no such authorization was given. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One this evening, Trump reversed course and said that he "wouldn't have wanted that — not a second strike" and promised to "look into" it. In practice, since Trump is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, that can only mean finding someone in the military chain of command to take the blame if it becomes politically necessary.

Trump also said that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had assured him that no such order had been given. But even if Trump hadn't issued an illegal order to kill survivors himself, Hegseth—a "terminal major" in the Minnesota Army National Guard before his appointment—has already developed a habit of ignoring what he's supposedly been told to do by the White House.

Hegseth's contribution to the discourse today was to post a cartoon meme showing a children's book character blowing up "narco terrorists."

Why does this matter?

• Nobody who respects or understands the United States military ever jokes about war crimes. 

• Trump is ultimately responsible for any crimes committed here and cannot be trusted to "look into" how guilty he is. 

• A president who refuses to take responsibility for issuing illegal orders is throwing the military under the bus.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said American citizens were practice for the American military.

Trump addressed a gathering of virtually all of the nation's senior military leadership today. More than 400 generals and admirals, plus their senior enlisted aides, were summoned from commands all over the world at the behest of Trump's Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. News of the meeting was leaked last week, and Trump had clearly heard about it at the same time as the rest of the world—or had been told and then forgot—because he initially thought Hegseth was meeting with foreign generals rather than demanding the entire military leadership of this country attend him. 

Trump was a late add to the program, which was originally supposed to be about ex-National Guardsman Hegseth lecturing career military officers on the "warrior ethos." (Hegseth's own aides, speaking on background, told reporters yesterday that they believe he is in the middle of a mental health crisis.)

Hegseth, whose own mother joined in accusations that he had abused women, used the speech as an occasion to announce that he would expunge disciplinary records of such "earnest mistakes" committed by servicemembers. He accused "females" of weakening combat units with their presence, and called the idea that the military should reflect the actual American public an "insane fallacy." Hegseth, who was fired from two consecutive jobs with veterans' charities for losing control during alcoholic binges, also complained at length about "beardos"—servicemembers with medical authorizations to wear neatly trimmed beards because of folliculitis, mostly African-Americans. 

Trump then replaced Hegseth on the stage, received in silence that clearly unsettled him. He made a "joke" about firing anyone who didn't agree with him, and then gave what amounted to a campaign speech. As has been especially common during his second term, Trump was meandering and unfocused and occasionally struggled to speak above a mumble. 

One thing he said clearly, though, was that Americans living in cities who oppose his policies would be "training grounds" for American military forces. Trump called Americans who oppose him "the enemy from within" and a "horrible plague" and said that fighting them is "gonna be a big thing" for the troops commanded by the flag officers in the room. 

Trump, like Hegseth, left the stage to no applause (which is military protocol) but immediately, dozens of officials began speaking to reporters about the event, calling it "embarrassing" and "garbage" and "deeply troubling." Some outright questioned Trump's fitness for office—an astonishing breach of the usual deference the professional American military shows to civilian command. 

Why does this matter?

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights. 

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights. 

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He seized control of the Washington, D.C. police and put FBI and National Guard troops on its streets over a non-existent crime "emergency."

Today, after a week of telegraphing it, Trump seized control of the DC police and sent federal and military forces into its streets. He explicitly identified an assault by two minor children, a girl and a boy, on an infamous DOGE employee as the reason for placing another major American city under de facto martial law, but also cited the existence of homeless people and litter.

Many of the federal agents reassigned from their normal duties at the FBI and DEA were not accustomed to patrol work, and milled about uncomfortably in tourist areas. In an incident that might have been amusing under other circumstances, two dozen FBI agents swarmed the scene of minor traffic accident this morning.

In justifying this, Trump called the Americans who lived in the city "filth" and "scum." The District of Columbia is majority non-white. He also listed specific cities he intended to target next: Los Angeles, which he's already marched American troops into once, and Baltimore, Chicago, Oakland, and New York City. Like Washington, all of those cities have Democratic mayors who are Black.

In reality, crime in Washington is historically low, with all forms of violent crime down by double digits in the past year. Overall, the crime rate in the city is at its lowest point in thirty years—and that is backed up by a Department of Justice press release from earlier this year that, as of the time of this post, had not been taken down. That drop in DC's crime rate mirrors a nationwide decline in crime rates, which is at its lowest rate in more than half a century. 

That point bears emphasis: the median American was not alive the last time violent crime was this low, sixty years ago. 

Of course, there is crime in Washington. For example, less than five years ago, it was the site of one of the largest and most violent riots in recent history, although very few of the criminals involved were from the District. Shortly after returning to office, pardoned more than 1,000 of the criminals involved in that massive attack on Congress and law enforcement.

During those riots on January 6th, with video of DC police being beaten unconscious going out live for most of the day, Trump adamantly refused to call out the D.C. National Guard until it was clear that the insurrection had failed.  

Trump is a convicted felon who has been accused of sexual violence by dozens of women, and was found by a civil jury to have raped a woman. He appeared today beside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, whose own mother accused him of domestic violence. Attorney General Pam Bondi, his former defense attorney who, as Florida's Attorney General, took an illegal campaign contribution from him and then dropped a state action against his fraudulent "university," also appeared with him.

Why does this matter? 

• Nobody, not even Donald Trump, thinks this is about crime. 

• Nobody who thinks Americans are "filth" or "scum" because of where they live or how much money they have or who they voted for is fit to be president.  

• The FBI in particular has better things they could be doing right now.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He kept the media focused on the important things: whether there is a paint that could look as gold leaf would on the crown mouldings of the Cabinet room.

Trump held a Cabinet meeting today, and—as is his unique custom—spent it collecting praise from each of his department heads and airing his grievances. A great deal of what Trump said was a rehashing of old lies, with the usual caveat that it is not always clear that Trump doesn't genuinely believe some of his falsehoods. 

He did make some news, as for example when he admitted that he was unaware that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had unilaterally halted arms shipments to Ukraine.

REPORTER: So who ordered the pause last week?

TRUMP: I don't know. You tell me.

(Astonishingly, this is the second time Hegseth has done this without notifying Trump—or the second time Trump has been told and forgot.) 

He also had some criticism for the media. One reporter asked about rumors that the notorious sex trafficker and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had had some connection with American intelligence agencies. This was actually a friendly question, as it could help explain why Epstein initially received an extremely lenient sentence from a Florida district attorney, Alexander Acosta, who then became Trump's Secretary of Labor during his first term. 

But Epstein is a sensitive subject for Trump, who was a close friend and who made comments in public about how well he knew about Epstein's taste for "younger" sexual partners. Trump responded by attacking the media in general for not focusing on more important matters:

TRUMP: Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. We have Texas, this, all of the things, and, and are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable. You want to waste the time — I can't believe you're asking a question on Epstein at a time like this when we're having some of the greatest success and, and also tragedy with what happened in Texas. It just seems, uh, like a desecration but you go ahead.

Later, Trump was asked another question that wasn't about Texas floods or a similarly consequential story: his efforts to redecorate the White House. This was his answer, which took eleven minutes:

TRUMP: Thank you very much. Maybe just in closing, we spent a lot of time, effort, very little money on this room. This is called the Cabinet Room. It's been here for a long time. It had some pictures that were, not many of them, and not very good ones and I actually spent time in the vaults. The vaults are where we have a lot of great pictures, artwork and I picked it all myself. That's Andrew Jackson. That's a gentleman named and we call him "President Hope." He was sort of a real estate guy. People don't realize, he was a one-termer but he was a very good president and I'm not sure I should be doing this, he gave us the state of California. I'm not sure. Maybe he won't be there for long. The frame is almost the exact same size so that was one of the reasons, I have to be honest but Polk is a very good president about had the same frame that I needed. Up here you have the original George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower who was a very underrated president, built the Interstate system. He was the toughest president I guess until we came along but I don't mind giving up that crown. I don't want to be too tough on it. We want to be humane. He was the toughest president on immigration. He was very strong at the borders, very, very strong. Sometimes you can be too strong. He was strong at the borders and during a certain period of time they were so strong that almost every farmer in California went bankrupt. We have to remember that. We have to work together. We have to remember that but he was a very good president and very good general and a very good president and I thought he deserved a position somewhere on this floor and then you have, this is very exciting to me, he was not a Republican to put it mildly. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We have a lot of ramps. He was wheelchair bound but he was an amazing man. It's an amazing portrait and we used to have him in the room, a different portrait and it was a terrible portrait. It was almost like it was done by a child and I used to say you know I can't believe that he would have approved of that portrait of himself. And I was in the vault looking at things. I said what's that? And we have some great curators here. We have six great cure raters here at the White House. Of course there's no object. May have one but that's all right. They are very talented. He said that's a picture of FDR. I said really? Let me see it. Very well preserved. That's the picture they've been looking for for years. That was the picture of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. See frame, frame wise, it doesn't work. I want to be nice but it doesn't work if you have a big frame, a little frame but it's perfection. The mirror was down in the vaults also. I said where is this from? Beautiful, we put that up. Then over there is honest Abe Lincoln and that picture was in his bedroom and we thought that this would be a very important place because this is where wars are ended. I'm going to not say wars are declared. I'll say wars will be ended. I'm going to be positive. Sat in the bedroom for many years. That was his favorite picture of his self and the Lincoln Bedroom was very famous. You remember when Bill Clinton had it and he rented it out to people. We don't do that. It was an incredible room and we took that picture from his bedroom. That's abe lincoln. Over here you have John Adams, and they were the first occupants of the White House, 1800 . And John Quincy Adams, Mrs. Adams, we have them looking at each other and in between their stare is Abraham Lincoln trying to make peace and that picture was in a room that I have that was not important like the cabinet. I gave it up, I said I have to give it up because that's one of the greatest pictures in the White House. The White House has tremendous art and the oval office, when we're there, we'll go over that. That's something. We have the drapes, the whole thing. New drapes. It wasn't a big expense, very small. We took some of the china ware and silverware from the vaults and we had it cleaned up. Some of this has sat in the vaults for over 100 years. Many of the pictures that were put up in the oval office as an example, those two as an example, so he was president. He moved in in 1800 and he won the election I believe in November of 1800. John Quincy Adams. And we thought that would be—he was considered to be a good president and he was the first occupant of the White House so it made sense. I love the frame of those pictures. I'm a frame person. Sometimes I like the frames more than the pictures and we have the flags of the marines and space force now has its own flag. I'm very proud of the Space Force. The Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force, whole thing. Coast Guard is right there. Never forget the Coast Guard. They do a great job. We have the flag -- it's really become quite a beautiful place. I don't want to tell—Marco pointed it out. I said leave the clock. As president you have the power, if I go into the state department or the department of Commerce or treasury, if I see anything that I like, I'm allowed to take it. So I'm in Marco's office and I see this gorgeous clock, grandfather clock. I said there it is, I said Marco. Rules and regulations, I said Marco, I love this clock, look at it. He said what clock? The clock that's in the other room is incredible. Nobody gets to see it there. Marco—I tried to talk him into it at first and it sort of worked and then I had to use a little more. I'd love to take that clock out and put it in that cabinet room. I said are you serious? I said Marco, I have the right to do it, Marco. That's his contribution to the cabinet room. By the way, it's an incredible clock. It's an important room. So if I see it again, maybe we'll move it back. Here we put these lamps have been very important actually if you see pictures like Pearl Harbor and Tora! Tora! Tora! And often times I show the lamps. This is a very important room. You never know what they do but they were missing medallions. They had a chain going into the ceiling and I said you can't do that. You have to have a medallion. They said what's that? I said I'll show you. And you see them, they were put up there. We did these changes and when you think of it, the cost was almost nothing. We also painted the room a nice color, beige color and it's been really something. The only question is, my—my cabinet can take a vote. You see the top line moldings, because you can't paint it. If you paint it, it won't look good because they never found a paint that looks like gold. You see that the in the Oval Office. They tried for years and years, they never found a paint that looks like gold. Painting is easy but it won't look right. Linda, do you have an opinion?

EDUCATION SECRETARY LINDA McMAHON: I'd gold leaf it.

TRUMP: Would you gold leaf it? 

 Trump is correct about this much: it is difficult to find a paint that looks exactly like gold leaf.

Why does this matter?

• Redecorating the Cabinet Room should actually not be this high on the list of presidential priorities. 

• Knowing (or remembering) what your Defense Secretary is doing with respect to a major world conflict should be.

• One way to avoid reporters asking questions about your relationship with sex criminals is not to have relationships with sex criminals during which you talk openly about your knowledge of their sexual habits. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got cut out of the loop by his own Defense Secretary for months—or at least, that's what he says.

Today, the Trump White House leaked a story about Pete Hegseth, the weekend Fox News personality Trump appointed as his Secretary of Defense, that would normally be a death knell for a Cabinet member: that Hegseth had made a major policy shift without telling Trump. Specifically, Hegseth is being accused by Trump officials of having unilaterally halted weapons shipments to Ukraine in January, less than a week after being confirmed—and without telling anyone at the White House.

Since returning to office, Trump has pursued what White House insiders call a "no scalps" policy: he refuses to fire officials he has appointed for misconduct or incompetence for fear of drawing negative press attention. This was a constant problem during Trump's first term, in which he appointed dozens of people of dubious qualifications, only to attack them in the press after they were fired or forced out. 

Already in Trump's second term, this is being put to the test. His former National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, was forced out of his job last week after he accidentally invited a journalist to a group chat about war plans, in the process revealing several additional massive security breaches that he and other Trump officials, including Hegseth, had caused. But instead of being dumped entirely, Waltz was given a fig leaf—Trump immediately nominated him to be his Ambassador to the United Nations.

Hegseth lost jobs with two different veterans' charities for behavior while violently drunk in public, has white nationalist-symbol tattoos that got him deemed an "insider threat" by the military he now oversees, and was called "an abuser of women…that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego" by his own mother. He's also astonishingly unpopular with both troops and civilians alike.

Trump clearly values having a Defense Secretary who cannot stand up to him or push back against his impulses, as his first-term appointee, Gen. James Mattis, did. But Trump also values being seen as in complete control of everything, even when that is manifestly not the case, and the idea that Hegseth was pursuing his own policy for months without being noticed is the sort of thing Trump would normally be enraged by. 

It is possible that there is a faction within Trump's administration trying to manipulate him into firing Hegseth—which would also be familiar territory from Trump's first term.

Why does this matter?

• It's extremely bad if a Secretary of Defense is making major policy decisions without the President noticing for months.
  

• This is not the sort of thing that would happen in a remotely competent administration.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired the National Security Advisor who accidentally leaked war plans to a reporter… sort of.

In March, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg broke the story of how Trump's National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, had accidentally added him to a group chat on the app Signal in which he and other Trump officials were discussing a plan to attack Houthi forces in Yemen.

This was shocking to American military and national security experts for several reasons. First, it is a serious breach of basic operational security to use a private chat app on private phones—the sort of thing that a serving member of the military would get court-martialed for. But tellingly, there were no military personnel in the discussion. The closest thing to a serving military officer was ex-reservist and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who was later revealed to have still more Signal chats going on his insecure personal phone, which included family members as participants. Hegseth was also found to have installed a totally insecure "dirty" hardline in his Pentagon office, for reasons he has not explained.

Trump at first pleaded ignorance of the whole affair, then tried to suggest that the 59-year-old journalist Goldberg had somehow hacked into the chat, then insisted that it didn't bother him, and finally simply stopped answering questions about it. But today, he fired Waltz—and then immediately tapped him as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, in an apparent effort to downplay the seriousness of Waltz's mistake.

Waltz's replacement will be Marco Rubio, whose list of simultaneous appointments now includes Secretary of State, Archivist of the United States, USAID Administrator and National Security Advisor. Rubio has no national security experience, but neither did Waltz. 

Rubio's multiple appointments suggest that a problem from Trump's first term—finding people willing to work for his administration—is recurring. This would be exacerbated by the renewed emphasis on absolute personal loyalty to Trump above everything else that has defined his second term.

Trump, who took obvious pleasure in getting the nickname "Little Marco" to stick to Rubio during the 2016 campaign, has also characterized his new National Security Advisor as a "lightweight" and a "disgrace" who is "all talk and no action" and who "couldn't be elected dogcatcher." Trump has also described Rubio as a "frightened little puppy" and a "choker" who "gave amnesty to criminal aliens guilty of 'sex offenses.'" 

Rubio, for his part, said that Trump wet his pants at a debate.

Why does this matter?

• No matter how gently anyone tries to sweep it under a rug, being that careless with classified information about the deployment of American forces during a battle is a big deal.
  

• National security advisor, Secretary of Defense, and many other positions in the executive branch require people who know the first thing about their jobs.
  

• The problem with wanting scared underlings who serve you rather than the nation is that that's what you get.
  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He announced he was gutting a "woke" law he'd signed during his first term.

Today, Trump's Secretary of Defense (for the moment) announced that he had "ENDED" the DOD's Women, Peace and Security program. Pete Hegseth called it a "UNITED NATIONS program pushed by feminists and left-wing activists."

Hegseth added that it was "yet another woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative that overburdens our commanders and troops — distracting from our core task: WAR-FIGHTING."

In reality, what WPS does is encourage the participation of women in building and maintaining peace in conflict zones. Where women can take part in the peace process, outcomes are better and longer-lasting, which means less need for "WARFIGHTING" that unnecessarily risks American lives.

Or, as Trump's own State Department puts it:

The full, equal, and meaningful participation of women at all levels of peacebuilding, security, and decision-making processes is essential to achieving sustainable global peace and security. The U.S. implementation of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) is both a moral and strategic imperative of U.S. foreign policy and national security. When we invest in WPS initiatives through policies and programs, we invest in sustainable peace, international security, and economic stability.

Since returning to office, Trump has systematically purged women from military commands, usually without any explanation, although almost always with some veiled reference to their gender. But that doesn't really explain why Trump feels so strongly about this program that encourages the role that women can play to help resolve conflicts.

Trump himself has never served in the military, claiming student exemptions from the Vietnam draft, and when those ran out, a mysterious and non-recurring foot ailment, which was attested to by a doctor who called the diagnosis a "favor" to his landlord, Fred Trump Sr.

The Women, Peace, and Security Act was passed on a voice vote by both houses of a Republican-controlled Congress in 2017, and signed into law by the president at the time—Donald Trump.

Why does this matter?

• America's military effectiveness is more important than political performance art.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pled ignorance of a massive national security scandal that broke today.

Today, journalist and editor Jeffrey Goldberg published a story in The Atlantic detailing how he was accidentally added to a private group chat between Trump administration officials on a commercial messaging service. The subject of the group was the U.S. military strike against the Houthi rebels in Yemen on March 15. 

After being added to the chat by Trump's national security advisor Mike Waltz, Goldberg was able to see detailed information that, "if they had been read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel."

The chat included Vice-President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and a number of other senior intelligence officials appointed by Trump. (The links in the previous sentence go to some of their comments on the importance of protecting classified information.) None of them noticed or questioned Goldberg's presence.

In addition to the leak being embarrassing, the very existence of the group itself is almost certainly illegal. Signal is a private commercial service, and it has not been approved for use by government officials. There are several secure electronic systems that are—but Trump's appointees may have been hesitant to use them because they create records that cannot be deleted without leaving tracks. (Messages in the chat Goldberg saw were set to delete after a period of time, which is illegal as they are government records.)

Gross negligence by government officials in exposing secret defense information is a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison.

Asked about the matter today, several hours after the story broke, Trump said he'd never heard anything about it.

REPORTER: …your reaction to the story in the The Atlantic today that said that some of your top cabinet officials and aides had been discussing very sensitive material on Signal… What is your response to that?

TRUMP: I don't know anything about it. I'm not a big fan of The Atlantic. To me it's a magazine that's going out of business, I think it's not much of a magazine, but I know nothing about it. You're saying that they had—what?

REPORTER: They were using Signal to coordinate on sensitive materials.

TRUMP: Having to do with what? Having to do with what? What were they talking about?

REPORTER: The Houthis.

TRUMP: The Houthis? You mean the attack on the Houthis?

REPORTER: Right.

TRUMP: Well it couldn't have been very effective, because the attack was very effective, I can tell you that. I don't know anything about it. You're—you're telling me about it for the first time.

Goldberg's article makes clear that administration officials were asked for comment before publication, and the article as published includes confirmation from the National Security Council that the Signal thread was genuine. 

If Trump's apparent bewilderment was genuine, it means that he was never told about a massive security breach—or that he was, today, and had already forgotten.

Why does this matter?

• There's no functional difference between a president who is cut out of the loop by his own staff, and one who can't remember what they told him anyway.

• The president is responsible for the incompetence of the people he puts in charge of national security.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, for no reason—at best.

Trump announced today that he was firing Air Force Gen. CQ Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest position in the United States Armed Forces. Brown is the second Black officer to serve in that role or its equivalent in the history of the United States.

Trump gave no reason for the firing, but his new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, had said before he was confirmed that "you gotta fire" Brown because, according to Hegseth, there was no way to know if Brown was actually qualified to serve.

Brown went through ROTC, then was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Air Force in 1985 after receiving a degree in engineering aeronautical engineering from Texas Tech. He later earned a master's degree in aeronautical engineering from Embry-Riddle University. He was an F-16 pilot and instructor, logging more than 2,900 hours and 130 in combat. He qualified on sixteen different aircraft in total. Brown served in a variety of senior staff roles in the Air Force: he was the second to the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, the director of the unit reporting to the Secretary of the Air Force, and deputy director of operations and later deputy commander of CENTCOM. Prior to becoming a general officer, he commanded fighter squadrons and fighter wings, and has been deployed to commands in Asia, Africa, and Europe. His first role as a brigadier general was command of a fighter wing at Aviano Air Base in Italy, and he subsequently served as director of operations, strategic deterrence, and nuclear integration for the Air Force's European command. After his tour at CENTCOM, he took command of the United States Pacific Air Forces. Trump himself appointed Brown Chief of Staff of the Air Force in 2020, and he was confirmed 98-0. 

Hegseth is a former Fox News weekend host. He served in the Minnesota Army National Guard at irregular intervals. He volunteered for active duty in Iraq in 2005, after Baghdad had come fully under American occupation, and served as a public relations officer. He also worked for, and was fired from, two different veterans' organizations.

It is rare for a Joint Chiefs chair to be fired, much less for no stated reason. Normally, the role would pass to the next officer in line, in this case Navy Admiral Christopher Grady. Trump instead appointed an officer who, under the relevant law, has none of the required experience, and had to be issued a waiver. Trump didn't explain this either, but he has made clear that he will be vetting officers for personal loyalty to him.

UPDATE:  Shortly after the Brown announcement, Hegseth also fired the Navy's top officer, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, again without explanation. 

Trump also purged the top legal officials in three branches of the military. Judge Advocates General (JAGs) "serve as a conscience of the military and a moral guide as to what’s right and wrong."

According to two members of his own staff, Trump places such a premium on personal loyalty above all else that during his first term he complained he didn't have "the kind of generals Hitler had. People who were totally loyal to him, that follow orders."

Why does this matter?

• United States military officers take an oath to defend the Constitution, not to personally serve the president, which normally doesn't worry presidents.

• Replacing a Black officer with a white one who is literally, by law, unqualified, is not the best way to show that you are only worried about qualifications and not race.

• If Dan Hegseth can't tell whether CQ Brown had an outstanding career because Brown isn't white, he's even less qualified to run the Defense Department than he looks.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He stood by Pete Hegseth, for now, allegedly.

Since being chosen by Trump to lead the Defense Department, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth has seen a number of stories come to light of embarrassing, disqualifying, or criminal behavior. He was investigated by police when a woman accused him of sexual assault in 2017, and eventually paid her to keep silent about it. His own mother sent him a scathing e-mail in 2018 accusing him of abusing women:

I have tried to keep quiet about your character and behavior, but after listening to the way you made [second wife] Samantha feel today, I cannot stay silent. And as a woman and your mother I feel I must speak out..

You are an abuser of women — that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.

…It’s time for someone (I wish it was a strong man) to stand up to your abusive behavior and call it out, especially against women.

More recently, the New Yorker reported that Hegseth's drinking has caused alarm at several of the jobs he has recently held. According to dossiers compiled by former employers, Hegseth sexually harassed female employees, took co-workers to strip clubs and then tried to get on stage with the dancers, showed up to fundraisers intoxicated, and drunkenly screamed "kill all Muslims" at an event at an Ohio bar. 

That behavior cost Hegseth his job with a nonprofit organization, but he had already signed on as a contributor with Fox News, where his colleagues were also shocked by the extent of his alcohol abuse. NBC reported that Fox News staffers said Hegseth showed up drunk to host his morning show, Fox and Friends Weekend, which went on the air at 6 A.M. The reporting was sourced to ten different Fox employees.

Last night, it was reported that Trump was considering dropping Hegseth, which would be the third failed cabinet-level appointee in a month. This morning, though, Hegseth claimed that he'd spoken with Trump and still had his support. According to Hegseth:

And he told me — the last thing he said to me or two things he said to me when I left his office when he chose me was — besides what he said about being a war fighter we can get into — that was you’re going to need to be tough as shit. You need to be tough as shit. But he paused again as I was walking away and said …‘Hey, Pete, I got your back. It’s a fight. They’re coming after you. Get after it.’

It's entirely possible that this is true, or at least that Trump really did say these things to Hegseth, whether or not he meant them. Trump didn't mention Hegseth at all today, including to confirm or deny Hegseth's version of events. 

Trump is reportedly considering replacing Hegseth with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Trump has called DeSantis a "sad little man" and suggested that he is a pedophile.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if the president-elect is picking cabinet members because he saw them on TV.

• A competent administration wouldn't have needed reporters to do their vetting for them.

• An out-of-control alcoholics who needs his mommy to run interference for him is maybe not the best choice for Defense Secretary.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He replaced one political loyalist with another as his attorney general pick.

Today, former Rep. Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Trump's pick for attorney general. Gaetz had resigned from Congress last Wednesday, the same day that Trump tapped him to lead the Justice Department, in order to avoid the publication of an Ethics Committee report on allegations that he had engaged in the sex trafficking of minors, among other crimes.

In the meantime, witnesses have spoken out and documents have been released to the press that corroborate the worst allegations against Gaetz.

Gaetz is one of at least three Trump nominees (so far) to have credible criminal sexual assault charges made against them, not counting Trump himself. A police report from 2017 was released today about Pete Hegseth, the weekend Fox News host Trump has tapped to lead the Defense Department. Hegseth paid the woman who made the charges an undisclosed sum of money in exchange for her silence. She sustained injuries consistent with sexual assault. A Trump spokesperson falsely claimed that a police report had exonerated Hegseth.

Trump picked Gaetz impulsively during a two-hour plane ride, with key advisors out of the loop, and Gaetz himself in attendance. There was no opportunity for his staff to present him with some of the better-known facts about the charges made against Gaetz. 

Today, just hours after Gaetz pulled out, Trump announced he had chosen Pam Bondi as his latest pick. Bondi was his personal defense attorney for his first impeachment trial, but her relationship with him goes back years. In 2013, she sought and received a $25,000 political donation from Trump's private charity foundation before deciding, as Florida's attorney general, not to pursue Floridians' complaints against his Trump University scheme, which was ultimately found to be fraudulent. (It's illegal for charities to make political donations. This was one of a litany of illegal actions that ultimately led to the Trump Foundation being shut down by New York state officials and Trump personally being fined millions of dollars.)

Why does this matter?

• Bad things happen when presidents choose staff based on personal loyalty rather than fitness for office.